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“What do you miss about her?” Buck said quietly.
Eddie turned away, not liking the glint in his eyes. It was cold, and Buck was never cold. It spoke to the disappointment he wasn’t allowing to show, but Eddie could feel it in the silence anyway. Buck would never say, it’s okay, I understand, love makes you do crazy things. He’d simply been on the other side of the equation too many times.
It sucked, disappointing him. Buck was hard to disappoint. It made looking in his eyes right now impossible. It was like letting down Christopher, Abuela. Bobby. Something about knowing nothing he could say would drive them away made laying out his flaws, ugly and raw as they were, all the more difficult. He hadn’t been planning to tell Buck about Sh— About Kim. Hell, he hadn’t planned on there being anything to tell. He’d told himself, one date. One more glance into that shop window, one stilted conversation, one touch.
He hadn’t let himself think far enough ahead to what it would be like to introduce her to his son, a boy still grieving his mother, or his family. The team. The questions they would have, the looks they’d exchange. It hadn’t felt real then, like he was stuck in a dream where Shannon was still here, alive, working in a little shop just miles away. It was feeling all too real now. He felt the hot shame wash over him, how it felt to be exposed by someone he couldn’t pretend with.
A slip of the tongue was all it had taken and here they were, half-drunk beers forgotten on the countertop separating them. He’d stuttered like a teenager, trying to get an explanation out. He hadn’t meant— Marisol and him just— If Buck could just see her he’d understand— Because it was Shannon. The mother of his child, the love of his life, his best friend. It had always been about her. Ana, Marisol, the blind dates. How hard he tried, the performance of it all. Catch the eye of some beautiful brunette at a coffee shop and think, here we go again, with that dizzy sort of excitement. It’s her, he’d think, every stupid time. This is it. This is the time it’ll all slot into place and feel… right. And she’d be perfect and love Christopher and their little life, she’d be patient with his job and patient with his kid and patient with him and all his neuroses. She’d take all he had to give with a smile on her face and accept that he’d always have one foot out the door because closing it behind him felt too stifling, too real.
But Kim was not Shannon. None of them could match the brightness of her. It was already fading in his memory and he felt himself scrambling to hold onto it in his mind.
“What?” he said dazedly, staring at the spot between Buck’s shoulder blades, the tense way he was holding himself. They hadn’t looked at each other in the eyes in minutes.
Buck leaned his hands on the counter before him. “You keep trying to replace her,” he said in that same dull way, not turning around.
“I’m not—“ Eddie said, disgusted at the idea.
“Look me in the eye and tell me you loved any of them,” Buck said and there was a bit more heat in his voice now. He spun around. “Ana, Marisol, Kim. I mean, God, Eddie, while you’re so busy trying to find a new mom for Christopher, they’re trying to fill shoes they can't possibly fill. Because they’ll never be her.”
Eddie couldn’t help the hot anger that sparked. He took a deep breath, exhaling noisily.
“So tell me, Eddie,” he said, “Did you get with her because you love her or are you clinging to the idea of her because you're so scared of finding something real?"
And well, that. There was nothing to say to that. “I’m not talking about this with you.”
“Why the hell not?” Buck pushed forward, now just steps away. “You sure as hell could use me as an excuse to two-time your adoring girlfriend. Don’t I get some kind of explanation?”
“Right,” Eddie thundered, “Because what you did to Taylor was so much better.”
Buck laughed and the sound had nothing of his usual good humour in it. “I hated myself for what I did to her and you know that. Hen stepped out on Karen and she still hasn’t forgiven herself; it’s been years.”
He shook his head. “This,” Eddie said, “is different. I… I saw the face of the woman I married, the woman I buried, and you’re telling me I could’ve walked away? Would you do it any different?”
“Except it wasn’t her. She isn’t Shannon.”
“I know that.”
“She’s some shop girl that thinks she found a nice, single dad. Who knows, maybe she’ll be just enough like her to satisfy you. God knows the rest of them weren’t.”
Buck was being cruel. Whatever this had triggered within him was cutting deep and Eddie didn’t know what to do with that. Buck, so starved of affection from the start that he couldn’t fathom being offered love so readily and not holding onto it with everything in him. He wouldn't understand someone like Eddie, being offered the world on a silver platter and having it feel like the bars of a vast cage closing in around him. He desperately wanted to go back to an hour ago, walking into Buck’s apartment with a takeout bag on his arm and seeing that warm, familiar smile. It was so rare that they hung out just the two of them these days. It had been nice.
“And if you were really doing this for Chris’ sake, you’d stop to think what trying to replace his mother with every woman you date is doing to him.”
And that was that. The ultimate blow. Eddie knew he was an okay dad on the best of days. But hearing it confirmed, that everything he’d done to give Chris back some semblance of the life he’d lost for them was a wasted effort. He sat down heavily, fingers white on the table edge.
Buck sighed. His expression was softer now, regretful. “I know how much you want to give him that- that picture perfect family, Eds, but—“ Eddie’s expression shuttered. “I’m telling you, he doesn’t want it. Maybe for a while there, after Shannon, he did, but… Man, can’t you see he’s happiest when you are? You’re fighting so hard to give him something he never asked for.”
“A kid needs a mother.”
Buck shook his head. “Your kid needs to know the people he cares about are gonna stick around. Your kid needs a dad who’s happy. I don’t know who told you you weren’t enough for that kid, but maybe ask him what he thinks about that. I think you’ll find the answer’ll surprise you.” He was quiet for a beat, choosing his next words carefully. “And maybe, once you stop trying so hard, you’ll find someone who wants to be that for him, but not at the expense of everything else.”
A tenseness settled over Eddie’s body then. He said nothing.
“I know how important she was to you, Eddie, to both of you. I do, I know. I see it on that kid’s face every day. But he’s okay. You can stop trying now.”
His eyes fluttered shut.
He was on a beach somewhere, Shannon beside him, and in his mind, it was perfect. The breeze was gentle, they smiled and gazed into each other’s eyes, and it was perfect. He knew deep down the reality was far more complicated. But he could feel that gentle breeze and it felt true.
“If… If we had more time,” he said softly, pushing the words out like they hurt to even think. He felt a million miles away. “If we just had more time, I could’ve fixed us. Chris could’ve had his mom back. We could’ve been happy.”
“She wanted a divorce,” Buck reminded him, as gently as the statement could allow. It still stung, the blunt truth of it. “I don’t think either of you were happy.”
The breeze stilled.
“That’s not—“ He stopped himself. “I was a shitty husband. I let them both down, I know that. Maybe she was just scared to- to trust me again. If we had more time—“
Buck said nothing for a long moment. He leaned back against the kitchen island, studying him.
“We never really spoke, when she was…” His hand waved absently. “What was she like?”
Eddie stared at nothing. “Patient,” he said, “Too patient. Funny. Stubborn.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “She was my whole world. I couldn’t imagine my life without her. Can’t.”
Buck’s hand came to rest next to his. “Tell me.”
“She was… Shannon. My best friend. I don’t know. We were just kids back then, I—“ He felt the ghost of a smile stretch his face. “I loved being married to her. She deserved so much more than I gave her.”
“Yeah?” Buck smiled encouragingly, and he was closer to the Buck that he’d been before Kim. “Tell me about it. I mean, before the army, before—“ His mouth twisted briefly. “Tell me.”
But Eddie stalled. Because before the army, before— Well, there hadn’t been much of a before. It was two know-nothing kids staring at a positive pregnancy test, a proposal that wasn’t a proposal. His father telling him Edmundo, a man provides for his family. A buzzing numbness in his ear that wouldn’t go away — panic, as he now knew. Then, a family.
He’d run. He wasn’t too proud to admit it. Then it was Shannon’s turn. Two dumb, grown-up kids letting Christopher down one after another from the day he was born.
He loved her. He loved Christopher. He really, really did. That had to mean something.
“We were miserable,” he said. “I think it was my fault.”
He watched Buck’s brows furrow. “But you- you always talk about it like, like—“
“I loved her,” he said. “That’s what matters. We built something good, it just never… I wasn’t the husband she deserved from the start, but we were trying again. What does the rest matter?”
“It matters when you’re trying to recreate something perfect that never existed in the first place,” Buck pressed. “She wasn’t a perfect mom, she wasn’t the perfect wife. She was just… a person.”
“I loved her,” Eddie persisted.
“I know,” Buck said softly. “I know you did.”
“Am I fucking my kid up?” Eddie asked. “Again?”
Buck laughed. The sound was loud and jarring in the echoing space of his loft. “Probably, but from what I’ve heard that’s just called parenting.” He covered Eddie’s hand with his own. “He seems pretty okay to me.”
Eddie’s eyes squeezed shut and he bowed his head. “I’ve let him down so many times. I just wanted… to make this one thing right.”
“What do you really want, Eddie?” he asked, and there was still that hand weighing down his own. He felt it like an anchor.
“I want…” he started, looking up and around this big, spacious room and all the possibility it held. He didn’t feel that in his house. “I want to sit on your couch and watch a movie and not think about love or relationships and whether or not my kid will hate me when he’s old enough to know better …I want life to be simple for a minute.”
When he looked back, Buck’s eyes stunned him, the emotion in them bottomless and aching. It made Eddie want to promise so many things. I’ll never hurt you like they did, I’m sorry, I’d give anything. Empty words. “It could be.”
Eddie huffed a breath, already shaking his head.
But Buck never did give up, did he? Stubborn, just like— “It could,” he pressed, leaning closer. “Come on, seriously, tell me one good reason why it can’t be. Just you, me, Chris. What’s so wrong with that?”
Eddie groaned, pressing his back into the table. Buck was so all-encompassing when he got like this, it was taking the air out of the room. “Because, Evan—“
Buck scowled. “Don’t Evan me, not when you’re like this,” he said.
“Fine,” Eddie said, feeling unwound and lost. They never fought like this. It felt like standing on the edge of something. If he lost this, too… Fear couldn’t hold the words back. “Because it wouldn’t be enough.”
Those eyes grew wider and he could barely stand to watch the words hit them like a gut punch. Buck felt things so deeply, his face betraying everything that even briefly lingered beneath the surface. It felt, suddenly, like they were having two conversations at the same time. One, about a lost love and poor decisions. Another, everything they’d never said and would never say and could not even think. It was there, in the edges of Buck’s eyes that shone bright. It had always been there, in the things they could say. Because, Evan—
“Not enough,” Buck echoed and it stung to hear it parroted back like that. It sounded different in Buck’s gravelly voice.
Eddie tugged his hand free, rubbing the back of it furiously. “Don’t.”
“I’m not—“ he began, and Eddie couldn’t stand it.
“Don’t act like you would be perfectly happy giving up Tom— Giving up the possibility of love, just to- to pretend with me for a minute.”
Buck was not hiding the tears now, they welled in his eyes but did not spill. He was looking anywhere but at Eddie. He seemed equally strung out. On any other day, this would be the part where Eddie clasped a hand on his shoulder to steady him, hold his gaze steady until that unsure look finally settled.
“You have no idea what I’d give up,” he said. “For that.”
Eddie stood.
“Eddie,‘ Buck ground out, a single tear escaping. Another, another.
“I can’t do this, Buck,” he said heavily, heading for the exit. They’d been so stupid. So childish and hopeful and stupid. This play-pretend life they’d been slowly cultivating. The little spaces in his life he’d been carving out for Buck, bit by bit without realizing. So gradually he hadn’t even seen it coming, even by his own hands. A dresser drawer here, a spare key there. The will. The will, for Christ’s sake.
He desperately wished once more to go back in time to sometime before It was a date and after You could have my back any day. Things had felt simple then.
His hand reached the door just as Buck said, “So, what? I’ll see you at work on Monday? Just like that. Now who’s playing pretend?”
He gripped the cool handle and said nothing. That seemed to rile Buck further.
“I wish we could just be honest for once.”
Eddie sighed, so quiet only the shaking of his shoulders could give him away. “Buck,” he said, a warning.
Buck was at his shoulder in a heartbeat. “Tell me— whatever this is, isn’t better than all these months with Marisol or Ana, or- or whoever will be next, combined. Tell me you wouldn’t give that up just to stay here for a little longer. Tell me that means something,” he pleaded.
There was a quiet desperation in his voice. He was a man on a cliff’s edge, walking a ship’s plank, taking a leap out of a skydiving plane with no parachute. His voice said, please don’t let me be wrong.
But Eddie couldn’t. Call it Catholic guilt, or cowardice. He tried to imagine himself a better man, that turned around and said something or did something. But he was not, and so he didn’t.
He did nothing. Frozen, still gripping that door handle like he would pull it open any moment. Maybe his hesitation was what did it. “Should I say the quiet part out loud?” Buck said, still keeping that safe distance. Eddie was sure if he reached out, that would be the end. “Would that make you stay?”
That made Eddie turn. “Buck,” he said, abruptly exhausted, “I’m asking you to drop this.”
Buck laughed, eyes still bright and full. “It’s a bit late for that.”
“No,” Eddie said, because it couldn’t be. He couldn’t accept this but he couldn’t agree this was the end either. Buck’s face said the end was swiftly approaching and nothing short of another stray bullet or natural disaster could stop it. He wanted to press his hands to those tear trails and hold the flood back. Another foolish hope.
“You’re with Tommy,” he said helplessly. He cast a look around the empty loft. “You’re happy. Why—“
“Tommy,” Buck repeated, disbelieving. He did move, then. One hand circling Eddie’s wrist, no more. “Tommy. Marisol.” His thumb made absent little swipes down his palm. He didn’t let go. There was nothing more to say.
“Buck,” Eddie pleaded once more, but it was a hushed word leaving his lips. Barely a sound.
It took one little tug. A mild suggestion.
Eddie folded, reaching out to grab Buck’s waist with his other hand, pulling him close. For the first time ever, it felt nearly close enough. This close, the gravitational pull was impossibly hard to resist, which confirmed all of Eddie’s wildest fears. He’d always given himself the mercy of a safe distance from Buck, suspecting that whatever careful composure he had would crumble when faced with the reality of him, a breath away. Those impossible eyes, that plush, reddened mouth, that birthmark he traced in his dreams. He was nothing he was looking for and everything he couldn’t allow himself to want freely. Proudly.
Someone else would, surely. He’d braced himself for it, over and over. Watched Buck’s open and inviting heart be trampled time and time again. Held the tape while he mended it, starting the cycle all over. He wanted Buck to be happy, needed it like he needed it for Chris too. Like it was his responsibility. It meant not having this.
Because he wouldn’t be another person to break Buck’s heart.
Eddie brushed his thumb over Buck’s bottom lip and felt the breath stutter out.
Their eyes met. “Please,” was all it took.
Eddie captured Buck’s lips in a searing kiss, hurtling himself over that cliff, off that plank, out of that plane. He did it over and over and lost himself in the rush of endless sensation. He felt, distantly, Buck’s hand sliding into his hair and gripping. But he was too caught up in the path his own were making along Buck’s shoulders, his waist, his back. He couldn’t stop. Buck, for all his earlier pleading, was pliant in Eddie’s arms, coherent enough only to kiss back with equal determination.
It was a confession, this kiss. Each press of lips and tongue and teeth. From somewhere deep and quiet and hidden.
Eddie held him with a steel grip, but the kisses he pressed to Buck’s jaw were feather-light and adoring. They worshipped. Buck gasped and nosed at his cheek until their lips managed to find each other once more. He hadn’t imagined it would be like this. He hadn’t imagined it would feel like this. He hadn’t imagined it.
Imagining would have been like putting the words into hope. But hoping for this and not having the reality of it would have devastated him. “God,” Buck said, and Eddie was inclined to agree.
“I’d give it all up,” he said, foolishly. He tasted that plush bottom lip, letting his teeth drag as he pulled away. “I’d give everything up. You have no ide—“ Buck pulled him in, that hand still gripping him by the hair. He leaned back a moment later, needing to say it suddenly, needing Buck to know it. “You’re enough. You’re more than— God, Evan, you’re everything.”
Buck shook his head dizzily. “I— You’re making my head spin, Diaz.”
He held Buck’s face in his hands the way he’d wanted to and traced that mark like in his dreams and not a moment of it felt real. It made his next words easier. “I’m sorry. I love you.”
Buck laughed. He laughed again. That devastation in his eyes had been replaced by pure adrenaline. He pressed Eddie into the door and Eddie held onto the blasted door handle for balance as Buck took his turn, taking him slowly apart. When he remembered himself, he might demand an answer, say it back. They might want to talk about this and what it all meant and what to do about the fact that they were both seeing other people; her name, it was on the tip of his tongue, oh forget it… But right now he was being thoroughly kissed and Buck looked devastated in a new, thrilling sort of way.
It wasn’t simple at all, but he wanted it all the more.
—
“You should call Tommy,” he said, sometime later.
“Hmm,” Buck said, lifting his head from the pillows. Barely awake. “That sounds like some good advice.”
“Yeah,” Eddie said, a soft smile on his lip, gazing down at the sleep-ruffled softness of Buck’s hair. He wanted to touch, and so he did.
A whole world awaited them outside the walls of this apartment, people that deserved answers to questions they didn’t know needed asking. But right now, the sun was going down and the light was dancing across his best friend’s face and he knew it made him a bad person, but nothing short of an earthquake, a hurricane, perhaps an errant bomb, could bring him to care at the moment.
Later.